<i>Mussolini and Hitler: The Forging of the Fascist Alliance</i>. By Christian Goeschel (New Haven, Yale University Press, 2018) 388 pp. $30.00

Goeschel’s fine monograph adds significantly to our understanding of the fatal attraction that paved the way to World War II. Goeschel asks a fundamental question, What drew the two dictators together, strategic requirements, ideological affinity, or friendship? Goeschel sees the connection between Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler as an “instrumental union and politically constructed relationship rather than an ideologically inevitable pact or real friendship” (3), although he concedes that the two shared some common ideological elements. Notwithstanding its internal stresses and inequalities, the regimes carefully constructed this friendship from elements both mythic and real. Goeschel’s work seeks to explain the relationship in its rich complexity, focusing on “the rituals, ceremonies, emotions, gestures and other socio-political aspects of diplomacy” (7). Goeschel roots his argument in the current historiography that sees Hitler as a weak dictator, in the sense that he often expressed vague overarching goals that diverse factions within the Nazi leadership and bureaucracy competed to implement even without direct orders. Goeschel’s approach, however, seems much more problematical when applied to Mussolini, and he does not thoroughly argue that point.Goeschel researched in a wide array of German and Italian archives and performed a comprehensive reading in the secondary literature. The resulting evidence covers the development of the Hitler–Mussolini relationship from the first, almost disastrous, encounter between the two in Venice (1934) to their last meetings during World War II. Goeschel chronicles the many meetings, the international and domestic context surrounding them, and the areas of common interest and conflict that animated them. The story covers both regimes’ attempts to overturn the interwar order. Germany landed in a premature war with Great Britain and France. Italy, for its part, initially reneged on its commitment to join forces with Germany, opting instead to launch a parallel war in 1940. After the German triumphs during the early war years, the two regimes suffered ever-more disastrous turns as the war progressed.Goeschel’s main addition to the usual treatment of this subject is to wed traditional approaches to diplomatic history with techniques drawn from social history. Beyond the relationship between Mussolini and Hitler, Goeschel demonstrates that the public performance of their bond helped to develop an increasingly deep network of cultural, economic, and political ties between Germany and Italy. In short, the political performance art of fascist summit diplomacy had far more resonance than the decisions taken by the two leaders. This deeper reading of the Hitler–Mussolini relationship adds insightful nuance to it.Despite its many accomplishments, the book does have some flaws. When Mussolini and Hitler met in May 1938, for example, the Anschluss had created serious cracks in the relationship. Ethnic Germans in the Sud Tyrol carried out anti-Italian activities in hopes of a re-unification with the Reich. Mussolini complained bitterly to his foreign minister that German aspirations could force the Italians to turn toward France as a counterweight to Germany—a bitter pill for Mussolini given the ideological divide between the Fascist regime and the French Republic and the two nations’ proxy war in Spain. At the pivotal meeting, Hitler gave Mussolini complete assurance that he saw the Brenner frontier as inviolable, and the two regimes eventually undertook talks to relocate ethnic Germans from the region to the Reich. With that crisis behind them, the two leaders proceeded down the twisting path to the Pact of Steel and eventual war. Although Goeschel pays considerable attention to the tortuous relations between the two powers regarding Austria, his analysis overlooked the importance of overcoming the problem of ethnic Germans in the Sud Tyrol in clearing the way for the development of the German–Italian relationship and the signing of the Pact of Steel in 1939.On a larger plane, Goeschel argues that the “ideological parallels [between the two dictators] remained largely superficial,” and that the two regimes competed for control of the ultimate goals of the revolution in the world order that each, in his own way, strove to achieve. This characterization is reasonable—to a point. Nevertheless, the two leaders shared some remarkably similar ways of viewing the world. Both rooted their ideology in social Darwinism, and both saw expansion through military conquest as necessary for national health and a worthy aim in its own right to promote unity within their respective race-nations. As ultra-nationalists, they could never have had genuinely parallel goals, but their world views had far more in common than contingent events could undermine. Part of their relationship surely rested on a mutual recognition of similar frames of reference.These caveats do not undermine Goeschel’s excellent research and his interesting, complex, argument. His methodology enriches our understanding of the diplomacy and pageantry of the 1930s. This work is essential reading for those trying to comprehend the sordid world that gave birth to World War II.

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